In an effort to break through bipartisan opposition and public discontent with his latest health insurance reform proposal, President Barack Obama today called on the Senate to “take a final, straight up-or-down vote on the U.S. Constitution.”

“The real obstacle to approval of my health care reform plan is this ancient charter of negative liberties that says what the states and the federal government can’t do to you,” President Obama said, while standing among a group of physicians dressed in white lab coats and fellow constitutional scholars in white powdered wigs.